China on Ferguson Violence: ‘There’s No Such Thing As Perfection’

Officers stand next to a burning police car during a demonstration Monday night in Ferguson, Mo.

Asked by reporters about events in foreign countries, China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs usually resorts to a stock response that it doesn’t comment on others’ domestic affairs. Japan’s recent call for early elections? No comment. Scottish independence? No comment.

But when it comes to the U.S. and the riot that erupted Monday night in Ferguson, Mo. after a grand jury declined to indict a white police officer in the shooting of a black teenager, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying made an exception.

At the daily media briefing on Tuesday, when an American reporter asked about the unrest and whether the Chinese government would comment given past U.S. criticisms of China’s human rights record, Ms. Hua first stuck to the script.

“The case you mention is a U.S. internal affair. As the spokesperson of the Foreign Ministry I will make no comment on that,” she told reporters. Then, she went further.

“But I would like to say that there’s no such thing as perfection when it comes to human rights regardless of whatever country you’re in,” said Ms. Hua. “We have to improve the record of human rights and promote the cause of human rights. We can learn from each other in this area.”

Despite the hint of schadenfreude from Ms. Hua, Chinese media—all of which ultimately answers to the country’s communist government—stuck to mainly factual reporting about the latest violence that erupted in Ferguson, which police responded to with tear gas and non-lethal shotgun rounds.

Some users of the popular Weibo social media platform were more critical, seeing the situation in Ferguson as illustrative of larger ills in American society. “This is America; the Ferguson incident makes Americans understand what is American democracy, what is American equality, what is American freedom,” said a user writing under the verified account Gawking at History Without Uttering a Sound, which is given to patriotic, at times nationalistic postings. “Ferguson riot” was the third most-searched item on Weibo late Tuesday afternoon.

China’s government usually saves its criticisms of U.S. human rights issues for an annual report released by the State Council Information Office. The office began issuing the report in the late 1990s as part of what the Chinese government saw as a propaganda counter-offensive against the State Department’s yearly country-by-country report on human rights.

The State Council Information Office’s latest report, issued in February, mentions a range of issues, from mass shootings in the U.S. to government cyber-surveillance programs to Air Force drone strikes in Pakistan. Ferguson, which first became a flashpoint for racial tensions in America in August, had yet to occur.